Bad hats
I bought more Madeline for Samuel – all of the stories by Ludwig Bemelmans, conveniently gathered in the omnibus Mad about Madeline, which is introduced by Anna Quindlen. (LB’s grandson also has written sequels; they are not in the omnibus.)
I believe that Samuel would prefer to just listen to the first Madeline again and again, but he did endure all of Madeline and the Bad Hat. That book is about Pepito – the Spanish Ambassador’s little son – the girls’ next-door neighbor. Pepito is a sociopath. The first Madeline is pretty tame next to Madeline and the Bad Hat.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
I am struggling to find enough time to read The Sleep of Reason, C.P. Snow’s rather long, penultimate Strangers and Brothers novel. It, too, is concerned with a couple of very Bad Hats. They commit a horrific crime.
As a courtroom procedural, the novel is not at all bad (though the crime isn’t “center-stage” until the halfway point). It even includes a stimulating Law and Order-style discussion of free will.
As soap opera, the novel is so-so. Most of the series’s recurring characters are trotted out. Two of them are especially compelling. The first is the narrator’s father, who is struggling to accept his obsolescence. The second is the narrator’s friend, George Passant: an irreverent, seedy, aging libertine who has long fashioned himself as a kind of Socrates – and who is not inaccurately thought of as a corruptor of the youth. George looms large in three earlier novels (one is even named for him). It’s in this novel, though, that he commands my fascination. Is he partly to blame for how the Bad Hats have turned out? I am disturbed by his inability to confront this question.
(Honorable mentions go to Olive Calvert and Jack Cotery, who make interesting cameos.)
I believe that Samuel would prefer to just listen to the first Madeline again and again, but he did endure all of Madeline and the Bad Hat. That book is about Pepito – the Spanish Ambassador’s little son – the girls’ next-door neighbor. Pepito is a sociopath. The first Madeline is pretty tame next to Madeline and the Bad Hat.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
I am struggling to find enough time to read The Sleep of Reason, C.P. Snow’s rather long, penultimate Strangers and Brothers novel. It, too, is concerned with a couple of very Bad Hats. They commit a horrific crime.
As a courtroom procedural, the novel is not at all bad (though the crime isn’t “center-stage” until the halfway point). It even includes a stimulating Law and Order-style discussion of free will.
As soap opera, the novel is so-so. Most of the series’s recurring characters are trotted out. Two of them are especially compelling. The first is the narrator’s father, who is struggling to accept his obsolescence. The second is the narrator’s friend, George Passant: an irreverent, seedy, aging libertine who has long fashioned himself as a kind of Socrates – and who is not inaccurately thought of as a corruptor of the youth. George looms large in three earlier novels (one is even named for him). It’s in this novel, though, that he commands my fascination. Is he partly to blame for how the Bad Hats have turned out? I am disturbed by his inability to confront this question.
(Honorable mentions go to Olive Calvert and Jack Cotery, who make interesting cameos.)